Your oral health is very important to your overall health, so when a dental emergency occurs, it can be very scary. Some dental offices provide emergency dental care during their regular business hours, and some provide emergency dentistry even outside their regular business hours.
What Is Emergency Dental Care?
Emergency dental care can consist of many things. If you're suddenly in a lot of pain in your mouth or teeth, you may need to immediately see a dentist to figure out what is going on and how serious the situation is. Most offices will provide a same-day appointment for dental emergencies and provide you with the best emergency dental care they are able to.
What Is Considered an Emergency?
Abnormal tooth pain that appears out of nowhere could be an example of a dental emergency. If this tooth pain is hindering your ability to eat or causing so much pain you have trouble going through your normal day, you may want to give your dentist a call and see if they'd be able to get you in for a same-day appointment for emergency dental care.
A few other dental emergencies include:
- Swollen jaw
- Broken crown
- Sore gums
- Knocked-out tooth
- Tooth infection
What's Not an Emergency?
There may be issues that may seem like an emergency in the heat of the moment, but in the long run, they just aren't severe enough to warrant any panic.
A few examples include:
- Minor toothache
- Chipped tooth
- Lost filling
How Do You Determine What's an Emergency?
There are always exceptions to what is and is not an emergency.
If you're experiencing any of the following, you're most likely experiencing a dental emergency and need emergency dental care:
- Excessive pain
- Bleeding in the mouth
- Swelling of the face and gums
- A loose tooth in an adult
- Lost tooth
- Infection
For adults, even if your lost tooth or loose tooth isn't causing any pain, these can still be very serious and will require emergency dental care as soon as possible.
Emergency Dental Care Outside of Business Hours
Most dental offices will have an emergency phone number that can be called if a patient needs emergency dental care. Once you call, they will instruct you on how they will take care of you as soon as possible. Some dental offices may provide emergency dental care for non-patients, but this would require them to ask more questions and maybe provide x-rays to get a better understanding of their dental health.
Every time you take a bite of food, you should be grateful for your healthy teeth! A tooth can lose its health and structure quickly once decay sets in. Luckily, if you visit your dentist for regular appointments, the decay should not get too serious before your dentist notices it and can do something about it. That "something" is applying a filling. On the other hand, if the decay progresses too long before it is caught, you may need a crown or even an extraction.
We want to keep our teeth, and we know you want to keep yours. That's why we created this website to teach you more about dentists and dental care. Enjoy!